OTTAWA — The chairman of the federal Conservative leadership election committee privately raised concerns about Patrick Brown’s record while vetting him as a potential candidate, according to documentation obtained by The Canadian Press.
It suggests Ian Brodie raised questions about Brown’s finances in a phone call in late March with someone he was consulting as part of the vetting process after the former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives had declared his intention to enter the race.
It also indicates that Brody expressed reservations about claiming the candidate had been fully vindicated over sexual harassment allegations reported by CTV in 2018, which at the time led to an exodus of his senior staff at Queen’s Park, his own resignation and ultimately his ouster from the Ontario Progressive Conservative Parliamentary Committee.
The Canadian Press reviewed documentation about the call provided by a source involved in the one-on-one conversation with Brody.  The source spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the call for fear of professional repercussions.
Conservatives are reeling from Brown’s sudden expulsion from the leadership race last week – the result of more recent and separate allegations of financial mismanagement by a whistleblower who was part of his campaign team.
Debbie Jodoin, a longtime Conservative organizer, said through her lawyer last Thursday that she had been paid by a third company for her work on the Brown campaign and that Brown was involved in the arrangement.
Announcing the decision to disqualify Brown last Tuesday, Brody said only that the commission had been made aware of “serious allegations of wrongdoing” related to funding rules under the Canada Elections Act.
Brown maintained that his campaign did nothing wrong.  He has hired high-profile Toronto lawyer Marie Henein and is pushing the party to go through an appeals process.  The party has engaged independent legal counsel to consider whether an appeal can be heard.
Documentation about the earlier invitation in March appears to shed more light on the heated debate over whether the embattled politician should have been allowed to enter the contest in the first place.
On Monday, Brody referred questions to a Conservative Party of Canada spokesman, Jaroslav Baran, who said Brody would not comment on the process followed by the leadership election organizing committee (LEOC).
“He will not be involved in the in-house production of LEOC sausages,” Baran wrote in an email.  “There is nothing to be gained by setting such a precedent and breaking professional discipline.”
Some members of the leadership committee were strongly opposed to Brown’s nomination at the time Brody made the call, sources with knowledge of the situation said last week, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the filing shows the powerful president himself made inquiries about his own unanswered questions in March.
On Monday, Brown’s team said it had not been told that Brody had raised any concerns behind the scenes during the vetting process.
Documentation of the March call shows that Brody relayed that committee members had received a folder of documents from an anonymous source sent to their personal email addresses.
The documents contained records related to Brown’s TD Bank mortgage and other financial matters, the source said on the call.
The Canadian Press reached out to other members of the leadership committee about Brody’s inquiries during the vetting process, but did not receive a comment in return.
Call documentation shows the conversation refers to a report by Ontario’s integrity commissioner, released in April 2018, that found Brown had violated ethics rules by failing to disclose rental income and a large loan he used to to finance a $2.3 million waterfront property in 2016 and 2017. The report said Brown, who at the time earned about $180,000 a year as provincial party leader, had taken out a mortgage for about 1.72 million dollars from TD Bank.
According to the call documentation, Brody expressed that there were questions about Brown’s income and how he could afford the home.
In response to a February 2018 report by the Globe and Mail about the purchase, Brown said he had received help from his family to buy his home.  On Monday, his campaign spokesman said he had “nothing new to add” on the matter.
The filing shows the call was also about the March 9 settlement of Brown’s years-long defamation lawsuit against CTV.
A statement released by the broadcaster and Brown at the time said CTV regretted that some “key details” in the original story were inaccurate.  The statement did not specify what those inaccuracies were, but the original article included a correction that updated the age of one of the two women who accused Brown of sexual abuse.
The news network said in March that no money was exchanged in the settlement.
Brown has continued to deny any wrongdoing and the allegations have not been proven in court or independently verified by the Canadian press.
Although Brown was elected mayor of Brampton, Ont., in October 2018 — less than a year after the story broke — the settlement appeared to pave the way for bigger ambitions: He announced his intention to run for federal Conservative leader just four days later.
“When the media tried to make me invalidate the latest victim of the culture by smearing me with false allegations, I fought back and won,” Brown told a cheering crowd at his campaign launch.
The narrative that Brown was cashed out of the settlement didn’t seem to sit well with Brody, according to the source with knowledge of the call, and the president said the allegations remain troubling.
Despite this concern, and the fact that the Ontario Progressive Conservatives had previously ruled out Brown running under their provincial banner, the federal leadership election organizing committee ultimately approved Brown’s candidacy on April 26.
Chisholm Pothier, a spokesman for Brown’s campaign, said Monday that they had not received questions about either issue and were not informed of any concerns Brodie was raising at the time.
He said the leadership committee requested Brown’s bank records during the audit process and there was no further communication about financial matters after the campaign provided them.
“As with the approach to the complaint and the LEOC decision, the campaign appears to be informed by the press rather than the party on these issues,” Pothier said.